Merle French Bulldogs – Making Money off Misery

Merle French Bulldog with Missing Eyes

The recent trend of breeding Merle French Bulldogs is deeply disturbing to anyone who cares about the breed. While French Bulldogs can come in many colors and patterns, the gene for Merle patterning is the one that is not found in purebred French Bulldogs. Breeders produce so called Merle “French Bulldogs” by cross breeding a French Bulldog to a dog of a breed that carries Merle – likely Chihuahuas.

The resulting offspring are screened and selected for the merle dogs that also look most like purebred French Bulldogs. These dogs are then crossed together, and the puppies are then sold to the unsuspecting public as “purebred” Merle French Bulldogs. These cross bred dogs carry a very high price tag – much higher than the best bred French Bulldog from health tested, well bred litters.

Worse than the scam being perpetrated on the public is the fact that Merles equal misery in far too many cases.

Backyard breeders and puppy mills eager to produce high priced exotic merles won’t hesitate to breed two merles together – a process referred to as “merle to merle breeding”. Crossing merle to merle has serious, well documented health risks – deafness, blindness, Microphthalmia (small, deformed or even missing eyes) and even a condition referred to as “lethal white” which can result in abnormally high deaths in utero.

Ask yourself – what kind of person would risk this suffering in tiny French Bulldog puppies, just to get a higher price on the pups who do survive? What do you imagine happens to all of the abnormal, deaf, blind or disfigured puppies that are a by product of producing a handful of Merle French Bulldog puppies healthy enough to offered for sale?

If a breeder is ignoring even the chances of producing blind, deaf or deformed French Bulldogs by breeding for Merle French Bulldogs, what are the chances they care at all about any other health testing?

For every one healthy merle French Bulldog puppy you see, how many “Misery Merles” had to suffer, or even die? How high of a price are you willing to ask these puppies to pay, just so that you can own a fad color?